The Last Movie You Watched

[Rev. Rye]

This week in the Deep Hurting Project: Star Paws. It looks like a unholy mix between Cats and Dogs and Star Wars.

• Okay, so the first minute, we're introduced to Adventure Cat and his army of clones. They're CGI, their motion is uncanny as fuck, their actual models are hideous and covered in a bright glow, and they have an irritating voice and they have some of the worst lip-sync I've ever seen.
  
  
  How the fuck did anyone think this was a good look?
• And the big McGuffin is a bone. The cats are trying to get a fucking bone. Why? Because General Ruff and his dog army would love such a tasty bone that can even regenerate more bone. And apparently the creature who has the bone can rule the world somehow.
  
• And the bone? Apparently it came from the JURASSIC PERIOD. A period where all the bones are fossilized (read: turned into fucking STONE.) And it still looks like a fake dog bone.
  
  
  
• And there come the dogs... the cats are dogshit CGI models, and the dogs are real live-action dogs and they make even less of an attempt at connecting the voice to the dogs who are allegedly saying these things. And it's all shot on a digital backdrop where it's fake CGI or it's some mockup on a greenscreen and I know it's a greenscreen because in some scenes, they LEAVE THE GREEN IN. I'd put in the Richie Cusack clip, but we have a three-videos-per-post limit and it's proving to be one of those films you simply have to see to believe, so here's a clip of the dog scenes:
  
  
  And if it was just all this, it would easily be the most entertaining non-Bratz film in the Project, and I could maybe even ignore the fact that apparently the Civil War is still going on 2 years after it ended. But then again, it wouldn't have made the So Bad It's Horrible list. Then again, I can't find it there now that I'm looking at it... motherfucker, it got deleted and somehow, I didn't notice it got removed from the page after 39 minutes and 38 seconds, because its IMDb rating was a bit too high (at 5.9) WHERE WAS MY ANALYTICAL MIND?!
• And they need to travel back in time to the Jurassic Period even though the bone shouldn't be too hard for the BIA to find and the bone REGENERATES ANY CHEWED BONE.
  
• Megalodon is mentioned in the "research" scene. That's going to get its own entry in the [urhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_Shark_Versus_Giant_Octopus]Deep Hurting Project...[/url] in its own time...
  
• Also, Adventure Cat is a shitty name for the bad guy in one of these films. Especially since the good guy is named "General Ruff," and the original Star Wars had the opposite naming scheme, giving the military titles to the Empire, and associating the heroes with adventure and I don't even know what I'm talking about anymore.
  
• Chickens invented time travel? Dafuq? How would a writer even come up with a plot point like this?
  
• You know, I know that at this point, depictions of dinosaurs aren't going to please everyone, whether it's the anal-retentive-types who balk at depictions of dinosaurs that don't have feathers, or those whose mind recoils at the thought of velociraptors with feathers (or, I shit you not, T-rexes that make it look like a kakapo), but I think everyone can agree that they deserve better than this shit:
  
• THAT'S NOT A FUCKING STEGOSAURUS.  It looks like someone put Stegosaurus spines on a horse body. And also, they plagiarised a Far Side comic and didn't get the joke
  
  
• Also, I feel like I should include a supplementary post of the videos I probably should have put in this post but couldn't. So far, I'm thinking the Richie Cusack clip, the dumb stegosaurus clip, and maybe one of the cuter scenes for balance.
  
• I'm legitimately surprised it took 55 minutes and 41 seconds for them to get to toilet humour. And it was apparently a genius move.
  
• And looking at the rock formations? Is that fucking Monument Valley? And why does the brachiosaurus sound like a mix between Austin from the Reduced Shakespeare Company and Will Ferrel's Neil Diamond impersonation from SNL?
  
• A T-rex giving a fucking liver casserole recipe while some basic motion cycles play. Am I having a stroke?
  
• So, the dogs are announcing their plan to con the cats about The Bone and giving the game away ON TELEVISION. And somehow, this leads to T-rex terrorising what I think is New York.
  

You know what, because I dropped the ball this week, to compensate, I'm going to watch two films from the Project next week. One action/adventure film (most likely Escape Plan 2: Hades) and a youth film that actually stayed on the list. And just to check this again and cross-reference it with the TVTropes pages, I have removed one other film from the list: Chop Kick Panda, which was, ironically, the one I probably would have picked anyway due to its length (or lack thereof).

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"Thagomizer" has been adopted as the official name for that bit. Scientist like a bit of a chuckle too.

[Rev. Rye]

"Thagomizer" has been adopted as the official name for that bit. Scientist like a bit of a chuckle too.

That I know, but somehow, they totally forgot the joke.

Oh, yeah, I should probably follow through on that promise to include the videos I would have put in the orignal post if not for the three-video-per-post rule, shouldn't I?

The Richie Cusack clip, for leaving the greenscreen in in some scenes, for not knowing when the Civil War end, and for my not knowing I probably shouldn't have included a movie that was cut from the So Bad It's Horrible List after a bit less time than it takes to watch an episode of Breaking Bad in my list of Deep Hurting Project candidates:




The Stegosaurus scene, minus the Thagomizer dialogue:



I still stand by my assumption that they just put Triceratops plates and a thagomiser on a very shitty 3D model of a horse.

Also, that's not a fucking time paradox!




Something I probably should have mentioned, Adventure Cat is barely in this at all, so it is mostly just dogs pseudo-acting out a stupid plot.

[Rev. Rye]

This week's addendum to the Deep Hurting Project: A Car's Life, a textbook mockbuster for Pixar's Cars, made by Video Brinquedo of Brazil. Surprisingly, this is the only one that actually made it into the Project:

• Well, it turns out that it's 40:38, which makes it a good change from developers who claim their movies are shorter than they actually are for some reason.
  
• And apparently, this movie is "inspired by a true father-son relatonship."
  
• And it looks like the flaws in this are all self-explanatory: rudimentary CGI, a stupid and very basic plot, scenes of filler even though it's 40 minutes (like the crane handing Pop his speeding ticket), lots of references to cars that don't make sense if there aren't drivers to these cars (at least Cars did it properly), and performances that sound bored when they're not ear-rapingly bad.
  
• So, Piston's been given a grave, and the hub, which is all they found of him, is just out in the open?
  
• Sensitive, Kind, Wise, Sparky. And he's a life coach despite just being a child.
  
• And why does an old Jeep have a voice like a 1940s Hollywood starlet? And why is she called Diesel? And why is she trying to seduce her ex-boyfriend's apparently underaged cousin?
  
• Booting is not carjacking.
  
• And of course Diesel killed  Piston. Of course.
  
• Well, at least the music is decent, some good clarinet-based jazz that wouldn't be too out of place with the Modern Jazz Quartet if they replaced Milt Jackson with a clarinetist.
  

[EgoDeath]

Watched Rattlesnake on Netflix this morning before my morning run... it was okay. I'd probably give it a 6 out of 10. IMDb gave it a 4.5, but I'm a fan of horror/thriller flicks in general, so I enjoy even some of the lesser horror films.

[Rev. Rye]

Okay, full disclosure, it turns out A Car's Life isn't actually by Video Brinquedo. I should probably have guessed that, since they didn't call it "The Little [insert thing here]," it probably wasn't theirs. That and the big American flag on the back saying it was "Made in America" probably shouldn't apply for a Brazilian company.

So, this week's proper entry in the Deep Hurting Project is Escape Plan 2: Hades. I decided to watch the first one last week to get me up to speed on the movie, and on a scale of Rocky 1 to Stop or My Mom Will Shoot, it's more of an Expendables 2. It was fairly decent, and it's nice to see Ahnold and Sly exchanging barbs, although the twist that the prison was on a ship in the middle of the ocean was really dumb and I legitimately cannot fathom how impossible something of this magnitude is. And it got a sequel so bad that even Stallone himself considered it the worst movie he's ever done.

• So, full disclosure, it turns out that not only do we not get Ahnold in the movie, it turns out there's barely any Stallone in this movie, either. He only shows up about 10 minutes in. The real protagoinst, someone who isn't even mentioned in the summary on the back of the case is a guy named Shu, played by Huanh Xiaoming
  
• And our first look at Hades is a lot more lackluster than The Tomb. Say what you will about the Tomb, at least it looked interesting, like a modernised version of something out of Piranesi. This, it just ruins our suspension of disbelief with this cheap sci-fi crap. And what's with the really-bored sounding Magic Voice telling these prisoners when to fight?
  
  
  I know this is the same studio that brought the world the Wicker Man remake, but seriously, going from the semi-realistic to this futuristic shit? This is just pimp-slapping willing suspension of disbelief.
• And it's not even interesting sci-fi with elaborate set pieces and significant amounts of technology that can easily be explained in the context of the film. It's our world with some inexplicably advanced tech built into a prison that looks a lot like something out of the Star Wars prequels.
  
• Sly returns as a disembodied voice (and a flashback) reminding him of lessons in prison breaking 20 minutes in. Fucking Hell, they're really not even going to give him much to do in this remake to one of his films, are they?
  
• This includes one of the worst instances of the "two disperate conversations intercut to show how similar they are" trope I've ever seen, if only because, from both sides, it's 100% exposition delivered really fucking boringly.
  
• And it looks like Sly's back in action, trying to save Shu from Hades, and it's kind of disheartening to see the sequel completely buggering up the central conceit of the original film: one man trying to escape from a prison that's impossible to escape from, and I strongly suspect that if we saw someone from Breslin's team try to save him intercut with his escape from The Tomb, it would be a lot less interesting. A lot less suspense, knowing that someone had his back, like they do here.
  
• Also, the electricity is clearly bad CGI. Really a shitty move when your villain's main gimmick is electric torture.
  
• Well, it looks like there's at least one redeeming quality: while Shu's English is heavily accented and it can be difficult to understand him at times, at least he's got a good grasp of his Rs and Ls. Then again, many Chinese dialects do have different R and L sounds, so it's a lot more nuanced than, say, Japanese, but it's still nice to see Shu bucking this stereotype.
  
• And Hades is in Atlanta? This feels like a more mundane kind of dumb than the revelation that The Tomb is on a ship in the middle of the ocean.
  
• And apparently, this movie was not actually fully legal to make, because the people who owned the rights to the original are litigating the studio behind this for making two sequels. 
  

... and it looks like the original Baby Geniuses is actually on the So Bad It's Horrible/Film list now, so I think that means it's now officially part of the Project, the first, and perhaps only, retroactively added entry in the Deep Hurting Project.

[EgoDeath]

Watched The Influence on Netflix this morning...

A decent horror flick. But I'm a horror junkie... so I liked it. I'd give it a 6/10.

[Rev. Rye]

Okay, so here's a non-DHP-related post here: On a fairly roundabout recommendation rooted in a chapter in Street Gang related to Kukla, Fran, and Ollie, I decided to watch Lili. It's okay, although given that there's exactly one song, I question why they filed it under Musicals. But one thing's sticking with me: Leslie Caron's performance.





So, Tarantino fans, does Leslie Caron remind you of anyone?





So, instead of a magician or a puppeteer, she's latched onto a borderline sociopathic boxer with whom she's in a semi-abusive relationship. Hell, like Butch, Lili even has a watch that belonged to her father that's really important to her. I'd be legitimately surprised if Tarantino didn't have this film in mind when writing Fabienne.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Okay, so here's a non-DHP-related post here: On a fairly roundabout recommendation rooted in a chapter in Street Gang related to Kukla, Fran, and Ollie, I decided to watch Lili. It's okay, although given that there's exactly one song, I question why they filed it under Musicals. But one thing's sticking with me: Leslie Caron's performance.





So, Tarantino fans, does Leslie Caron remind you of anyone?





So, instead of a magician or a puppeteer, she's latched onto a borderline sociopathic boxer with whom she's in a semi-abusive relationship. Hell, like Butch, Lili even has a watch that belonged to her father that's really important to her. I'd be legitimately surprised if Tarantino didn't have this film in mind when writing Fabienne.

Other than both of them being short, dark, and French, I'm not seeing it.  I'm not entirely sure the 'watch' connection is particularly significant either, given the long tradition of watches being passed down in families.

Boru

[veoli]

A couple of fun films; Harry Potter 1 (7/10) and A Quiet Place (8/10)